


Aziraphale Vanquishes A Demon With Blankets And Soup

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Scatterings of History (Chronological) [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, No actual smut despite this being a hypothermia fic, Soup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Crowley is in a blizzard, and he's in trouble.  Aziraphale helps.  Crowley isn't used to being helped.
Series: Scatterings of History (Chronological) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634188
Comments: 37
Kudos: 137
Collections: Lyric's Emergency Fluff Collection





	Aziraphale Vanquishes A Demon With Blankets And Soup

A blizzard, Crowley thought, was a  _ stupid _ way to discorporate. Dark, and cold, and lost, and stupid.

Discorporating stupidly was bad. If he discorporated fighting an angel, or leading an army, or something else dramatic, Hell might cut him a bit of slack. Not this, though. Not something as simple and pathetic as this.

The eighth century was not shaping up any better than the seventh. Crowley missed Rome. Yes, they were bastards, but at least they were bastards with  _ roads. _ What he wouldn’t give for a proper road—

Crowley tripped over a tree root, and fell full length in the snow, and struggled to get back up. It wasn’t working very well.

Cold. Too bloody cold. Whose stupid idea was Germany, anyway? His hand slipped in the snow, and he tried to curse, and his numb lips couldn’t form the word.

He was going to discorporate. And it hurt. That was insult to injury, that being cold could  _ hurt _ so much.

Then there was a light behind Crowley. Bright even through the snow. Holy.

He twisted, managing somehow to writhe around so that he was facing it.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale said.

“A—angel?” It came out muddled, but Aziraphale probably knew what he was trying to say.

“Hold still, Crowley.”

If Aziraphale wanted a quick win against a demon, Crowley was helpless. Crowley hadn’t thought that Aziraphale was the type, but a job was a job, when it came right down to it. Of course—being smote by an angel would play considerably better with Hell than discorporating from cold, so— “Go ‘head. ‘Sokay.”

He was a thoroughly ridiculous snake. A moment like this, and he was trying to make sure that Aziraphale didn’t feel  _ bad _ about what he was going to do. Didn’t feel bad about hurting Crowley. Because this was going to hurt, there was no doubt about that—

Aziraphale bent down, slid his arms under Crowley, and picked him up.

“Whatreyoudoin?”

“I should think that would be blindingly obvious.” Aziraphale sounded snippy, and it was the best possible sound. Crowley decided that he loved it when Aziraphale sounded snippy, which made him, once again, a thoroughly ridiculous snake. But all that was secondary to the fact that Aziraphale was  _ carrying Crowley through the snow, _ walking on top of the crust in that holier-than-thou way that angels did with water of all kinds. The snowflakes fizzed around them, and the wind howled, and Crowley was fairly certain that none of it was touching him. He was a little bit too numb to tell for certain.

“Kaybut . . . why?”

“I’m not about to leave you out here to freeze to death,” Aziraphale said, as if  _ death _ was something that could happen to Crowley without holy water being involved. “I think—yes, around  _ here, _ rather.” He took a sharp turn to the right, shrubbery parting before him, and then they were on a trail of some sort. “Just a moment longer.”

“Momenlonger what?”

“Before we reach the forester’s hut.”

Crowley twisted his head, blinking frost off his eyelashes. And suddenly, looming up suddenly in the blinding snow, there was a wooden wall with a door in it.

Aziraphale miracled the door open rather than put Crowley down. “There we go,” he said gently. “Here.” He laid Crowley on what was almost certainly the forester’s bed. “First, a fire, I think.” He moved over to the grate and filled it with kindling and a very large log, which he didn’t strain to lift any more than he had strained to lift Crowley. He clicked his fingers to light it, disdaining to muck about with the tinderbox, and then moved back over to Crowley. “And next to get you out of those clothes. They’ll be soaked through with snowmelt as soon as they start thawing, I would think.”

He produced a knife from some inner recess of his coat, and Crowley jolted away. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m just going to cut through the laces here. Er, and probably a fair amount of the cloth I’m afraid. The less I move you, the better.” Aziraphale sliced the laces of Crowley’s tunic. “Using miracles on myself, or for the apparent benefit of myself,” he added, “that’s one thing. The worst I can do is get in trouble for using them frivolously—” He faltered. “Well, that would be bad, it’s true. I would get a  _ very _ sternly worded note. But using miracles on  _ someone else _ rather begs the question  _ who was it, _ and I could  _ say _ that it was just some human, but there’s every chance that they would check. I am being watched somewhat closely over this whole Charles le Magne business. As, I imagine, are you.” He was efficiently taking apart Crowley’s clothing as he spoke.

Crowley had been naked in front of Aziraphale before, most notably in Mohenjo-Daro, where bathing had been Serious Business. He had never  _ felt _ quite so naked in front of Aziraphale.

He recoiled involuntarily as Aziraphale stripped the wet clothes away.  _ “‘S’cold.” _

“Yes, my dear, I know,” Aziraphale said patiently, and Crowley wished for the snippiness back. Gentleness felt too  _ raw, _ somehow. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Crowley, but do you know if you actually—well— _ have _ a body temperature?”

“M’body’s  _ cold.” _

“Not quite what I meant. If you wrap a human, even a very cold human, in these furs,” he twitched the furs on the bed by way of illustration, “the human will heat them up from inside, thus heating themself. A true serpent wouldn’t, and I can’t help but wondering if the furs would simply shield the serpent from much-needed heat. I can warm some of them in front of the fire, of course—” He took a few of the furs and placed them on the hearth, close enough that the sparks would put a hole in them if the log spat. “And in the meantime—oh! Warming pan! That will do nicely.”

There weren’t many coals yet. Aziraphale had just started the fire, after all. He scraped together a small amount of hot ash and then came back over with the warming pan. “Let’s wrap this in a blanket,” he advised, “and then we’ll put it right next to your chest—there—and then we’ll wrap the rest of you in blankets. That should hold in the heat.”

Crowley nodded, and then, to his own surprise, yawned. It was the sort of yawn that gave away that his jaw structure wasn’t as human as it looked, and it had nearly got him stoned on more than one occasion. He blinked, something he usually didn’t do, and struggled to hang on to wakefulness as Aziraphale carefully cocooned him. He couldn’t sleep here, he shouldn’t sleep here, he shouldn’t sleep—

In front of Aziraphale?

Aziraphale was helping him. Never mind  _ why, _ right now. Aziraphale was helping him. Aziraphale wasn’t going to smite him. Aziraphale wasn’t going to cut him. He had demonstrated that.

Crowley didn’t sleep in front of people.

This was the first time Crowley had been truly  _ helpless _ in front of Aziraphale. Before, they had always met more or less as equals. Yes, Crowley had been injured, a few times—oh, and there had been that time in Sumer—but somehow it was different from this protracted helplessness. And now, to go to  _ sleep— _

He just wouldn’t. That was all there was to it.

§

“Crowley? Wake up, please.”

_ “Mmphlgg!” _ Crowley spasmed in startlement, which made him realize that he  _ ached, _ ached all over.

“I made you some soup,” Aziraphale said coaxingly.

“I don’t need s-soup.” He was shivering. He had  _ stopped _ shivering as he prepared to discorporate in the snow, so it seemed extremely unfair that he was doing it now.

“Don’t be stubborn, Crowley. You need it, and I assure you that my culinary skills aren’t as bad as  _ that.  _ I had to use what the forester had on hand, of course, but there was a hearty supply of root vegetables. It came out somewhat similar to what they serve in parts east: borscht, I think they call it. I’ll have to find some way to pay the forester back for their provisions, but that’s a problem for later. Here, have a sip—”

“I don’t  _ eat _ soup.”

“I assure you that tonight, you most certainly do.”

Crowley met Aziraphale’s eyes.

_ Implacable _ wasn’t an Aziraphale sort of word. Nor was it the sort of word that could be combined easily with  _ fussy. _ Aziraphale, filled with a sort of fussy implacability, didn’t seem to care.

“I don’t understand  _ why _ though,” Crowley said.

“It’ll warm your internal organs.”

“That’s not what I mean! Why—look, in Eden, Adam and Eve were your  _ charges. _ It makes a  _ sort _ of mad sense for you to help them, even if the way you went about it was completely—” He ran out of synonyms. “Mad. And after that, you were assigned to the humans, so it makes perfect sense for you to help  _ them. _ But then you help  _ me. _ And I don’t understand why you help  _ me.” _ ’

“I have,” Aziraphale said, “happened upon you a number of times when you needed it. Drink up.”

“Nobody helps someone just because they need it.”

“The humans do. I do. Drink  _ up, _ Crowley.”

Crowley made a sound that wasn’t a word, and surrendered, and took the bowl. Or tried to. His hands were shaking harder now. Aziraphale held onto the bowl and helped guide it to his lips.

Crowley was in no shape to tell whether the soup was actually good or not. But it hit his middle like a jolt of hellfire, and he gasped a little before he took another sip.

Aziraphale held the bowl patiently and waited for him.

Crowley wished he had clothes. He needed clothes. He felt too naked like this, even though he was thoroughly wrapped in blankets. He needed to be on an even footing with Aziraphale, he needed to be able to joke with him, he needed to be  _ not like this, _ not to be cold and shivering and desperately in need of the angelic soup (not that he could tell if the soup was good or not, not like this; he didn’t really  _ taste _ it, he just felt the warmth pooling inside him). “I’m okay,” he tried.

“Nonsense. Drink up.”

Fussy and implacable. Crowley wasn’t sure how he was doing it. He sipped the soup again.

Aziraphale didn’t insist that Crowley eat the turnips and beetroot and such at the bottom of the bowl, at least. Apparently the main point was the broth, and the warmth that came with i.

“Demons don’t say thank you,” Crowley said, finally.

“You don’t have to.”

“No, but I  _ should. _ But demons don’t. It’s not that we can’t, it’s just that we—don’t.”

“Believe me, thanks are unnecessary. I would have done exactly as I did whether I got fervent gratitude or a curse out of it, because what  _ I _ get out of it was never the point of the exercise. I’m just glad you’re warm again.” Aziraphale put the bowl by the fire. “You’ll have to remain here a little longer, of course, until we can be entirely assured that you’re strong enough to continue on.”

Crowley was in no shape to argue. “Okay.”

“Of course, your mission to influence Charles le Magne towards greater conquest may suffer some setbacks. But really, I don’t think you were needed. Charles already had it in his head that Europe should be converted to Christendom, by the sword if necessary.”

Crowley grimaced. Inciting kings to conquest wasn’t something he liked, much, but it was something that Hell  _ did _ like. It was lucky for Crowley that most kings seemed to come with a certain amount of bloodlust, because otherwise . . . “Wait a minute? Is  _ that _ what this was about?”

Aziraphale turned and looked at him. “Would that make it easier?”

Crowley wasn’t sure. “Maybe?”

“Then yes, if you like. That can be what this is about.”

“It isn’t really, though.”

“No. It isn’t really.”

§

_ 779 AD, First Quarterly Report _

_ On January 18th, I picked up the trail of an unknown demon, believed to be exacerbating the tensions between Charles le Magne and Eastphalia. A number of miracles were required to rout the demon, including weatherproofing (self), setting wood ablaze, ensuring the warmth of a seasonal dwelling for self in the aftermath of the confrontation, and producing a number of root vegetables to compensate the human whose seasonal dwelling was the site of the confrontation (see attached form A). On January 25th, I returned to the road in an attempt to encourage peaceful conversion of the Saxons. It is to be noted that the confrontation with the demon was made more difficult by strict miracle budgeting . . . _


End file.
